How do I get a fanbase and tell good and bad things about our works

[SleepingPoppy]

I post 3 times a week on my social media, I have my own web, I have even tried instagram ads... but I still feel like I'm growing in an incredible slow way.

I actually think over 50 subs with only four updates (regardless of length) is pretty quick growth. I didn't look at your social media, because I just am not a social media person. I only skimmed, but I thought the art and concept for the comic looked pretty dialed in, so it might just be a matter of playing the long game?

You're going to see growth based on your upload schedule, so if you post monthly, your growth is monthly. If you post weekly, it'll obviously feel/look faster, but it's probably a similar rate of growth per episode.

Just my initial thoughts! ^^

[samiluu]

oh I see, I must be patient then. Thank you very much for your opinion

[LittleFoodie]

Maybe you can try to join groups with the same interests as what your comic is about and post about your comic. Reddit, discord, etc… just some suggestions. Go get your fan yourself type of approach

[samiluu]

fact is... i have a reddit but never really know how to post on subreddits or something and with discord I get kind of mad because too many people talking at once ;_; but I'll try again, thanks <3

[Kaydreamer]

By Tapas standards, 57 subs in four episodes is pretty good for someone starting a new webcomic without an established fanbase behind them. You should be pretty proud of that.

Readership count is also typically much smaller here than on WEBTOON. I notice you do have a WEBTOON version, which is good, but that will require off-site promotion to grow. (Since they don't have forums.)

Promoting your comic on Reddit is a really good idea! I see a little trickle of growth through that whenever I do.

As for your art, it's not bad, but it's not very readable; readability of colour, form and movement is vital for a comic. I'd recommend simplifying your shading style, and diving into a few videos on colour theory to lift your colours and escape the 'muddiness' that shading with black causes.

[Llyrel]

Seconding what others said about the number of episodes you currently have vs your subscribers number: 57 followers with 4 episodes is pretty good!

As for your art, I think it looks pretty neat and I love the amount of detail you put into it!
My suggestions so far would be the following:

• Try uploading pages at a bigger size. The maximum width you're allowed to have on Tapas is 940 px and I'd take full advantage of that to show your details in full and make them more readable. Also... I noticed that some pages seem to be smaller than others. Not sure if it's just the white space around panels or if they're actually smaller, but I'd suggest maintaining a consistent size for each page.
• Unless your characters are screaming or whispering, try sticking to a single font size: if you're drawing on a regular A4 canvas at 300 dpi, 10px is the smallest you want to go for your font to be still readable. To make your comic easily readable on mobile, I'd suggest using an even bigger font size, like 24 px or even 30 px.
• Consider switching to a vertical format, at least for Tapas and Webtoon. A lot of users here and on WT read comics from mobile, and on Webtoon especially having a comic in vertical format seems to be key to get featured. Not only that, but switching to a vertical format (so basically one full-width panel at a time) would make it possible for you to show your amazingly detailed panels in all their glory I know switching to a vertical format seems scary at first (I was also posting in traditional page format at first), but my subscriber count on both Tapas and WT did seem to benefit from switching to a vertical format, so it might be a good idea to try! Alternatively, I'd suggest reducing the size of the white "frame" around the panels so that pictures themselves can get more space ^__^
• For Tapas: consider posting more often instead of a bunch of pages once a month, consider posting a page a week or maybe two pages every two weeks. Posting more often means that your comic will appear in the "Fresh" section more often, giving you more chances to get noticed!

As for how to get a bigger fanbase: mind you, I'm no expert and my numbers ain't huge or anything like that, but... here are a few things I did that worked for me

Some stuff I did as someone who pretty much built an audience from scratch starting from a couple of years ago: Social media: make sure to have a recognizable "brand" for all art-related stuff. Basically, don't use a bunch of different nicknames for each platform you join, it makes it hard for people to find you/figure out whether it's actually you or someone else (note: careful not to overdo it, however. The more platforms under the same name you have, the more chances potential stalkers a…

[darthmongoose]

Since a few people have talked about how to gain subs, I'll try to talk about how to build engagement, since my comic does pretty well in that area.

Tip 1: What makes people comment.
One of the things people often miss about engagement is that people don't tend to comment on things like beautiful art (at least not more than once) or a really well-constructed story, or even a great action sequence. People do like those things, and they will draw and hold attention, but they don't get comments. In my experience the things that get comments flowing are:

• Things that are funny, whether they're intentional jokes or just odd character behaviours, relatable situations or even accidental innuendo.
• Intense emotional drama, reveals, betrayals and confessions.
• Stuff that is bizarre, novel or memetic.

For example, when average people talk about Star Wars, they'll usually talk about things that are funny, "these aren't the droids you're looking for.", "I hate sand." (example of unintentionally funny), things that are intensely emotional, "I am your father." or things that are novel, like lightsabers, Jedi knights or blue milk. It's hard to comment on something that's just a segment of the story doing its job of moving the plot along, so...

If you can structure a work so every update has at least one thing that could be commented on, like a joke, a big emotional high or a novel or memetic visual, item, creature or concept, you'll get more comments.

Tip 2: Lead by example and don't take your work too seriously
People in the comments often have a good laugh about the terrible choices my characters make, or guess (sometimes pretty accurately!) where the plot is going, or make jokes about the comic. I tend to be quite irreverent in my own creator comments, which are often quite dry or silly, encouraging the idea that it's okay to laugh at it and I won't get angry if people do. I'm not here to outsmart my readers, just to entertain them, so when people say silly stuff, I go in with a silly response. At this point my commenters have started replying to each other's comments, which creates a nice community feel and drives engagement. That does take a while though.

Tip 3: Be active in communities
A lot of people expect the audience to come to them while they remain an island, but that's not always the best way. If you're active on forums or discord communities commenting on other people's work, or you make the effort to leave interesting or fun comments on other people's comics and novels, you'll probably get more people coming to yours because they'll know you're a person they can engage with about content.

[samiluu]

will have to learn how Reddit works then, because I honestly I don't know much about it
I don't shade with black but thank you very much anyways, I'll take a look at it and see how I can fix it. I've been experimenting with color on the last page too cause I saw the colors kind of dull...
and yay people are telling me the same about 57 subs in four episodes I'm very happy about it

[samiluu]

wow thank u very much! I dont work on vertical format because I like to print the comics as fanzines even if it is only for me , you see, I'm a bit romantic. But... now that i come to think about it, I can draw them in the traditional format and later on cut the vignettes and put them on vertical format on a new document.. this could work, right?
I was asking myself to post a page per week but I was asking myself if I had the time (since there are 4 months per week and I hardly make the 3 pages per month and also I am worried people don't enjoy it that much if I post so often and only one page (tho this fear is a bit stupid bc I love a lot of comics here that post one page a week xddd)

[Llyrel]

But... now that i come to think about it, I can draw them in the traditional format and later on cut the vignettes and put them on vertical format on a new document.. this could work, right?

Yup! That's what I do with my own comic as well I'd still like to be able to print it one day, so I make my pages in traditional format first (which then get posted on ComicFury and Wordpress) and then copy/cut/paste panels into a vertical format for the Tapas/Webtoon version! It does take a little bit of time, especially at first, but once you figure out a process that works for you, it definitely becomes easier!

As for keeping up with faster updates: I feel you, it can be a pain in the butt D: if you haven't already, I strongly suggest building a buffer, aka getting a bunch of pages ready in advance so if for whatever reason you can't draw anything on a given week, you'd still have something to post. Personally, I like to make sure I have at least two/three more updates ready in advance.

And no worries about being annoying! a lot of comics update with only one page a week, and it's definitely one of the best ways for your comic to be seen more often! Unfortunately, Tapas doesn't really give many chances to community creators to get their work seen, so unless your comic gets featured on the front page and/or you manage to make it to the Popular or Trending category on update day, your best chance to get more readers is to appear more often in the "Fresh" section, aka where all comic that were just updated go.

It's a little different on Webtoon, however: while people on Tapas seem to be happy with shorter/more frequent updates, people on Webtoon seem to much prefer longer/complete updates and seem to be fine with longer waiting times. Webtoon is also much bigger compared to Tapas and being found on there is also much easier, especially if you post under one of their "small" genres, like Supernatural, Horror, Thriller or any of those that do not make it to the first row of genres on the desktop website: even if you don't update every week, there's so few people posting in those categories that readers will be able to find you even weeks after you posted... plus, unlike Tapas, if you have your comic listed under multiple genres, people will be able to find you under both categories. So I'd say that one update a month would still be perfectly fine for Webtoon

[samiluu]

Aaaah really, thank u very much, all this info looks very useful so, do you think 3 pages per month would work on webtoon?

[samiluu]

Okay, thank u very much! This is very helpful too

[Kaydreamer]

It's a little different on Webtoon, however: while people on Tapas seem to be happy with shorter/more frequent updates, people on Webtoon seem to much prefer longer/complete updates and seem to be fine with longer waiting times.

This is a super important distinction! Posting long updates monthly on WEBTOON is by far the better option over there, as is reformatting to vertical. WEBTOON readers like to immerse themselves in a longer update, and a lot of them read on their phones. I follow a lot of comics on WEBTOON which update monthly, and they do really well.

Tapas still has an audience who are fine with the 'old school' webcomic tradition of single-page, traditionally formatted weekly updates. But that's definitely not the case on WEBTOON. Having a different format and update schedule for each site may be a good idea.

[samiluu]

Thank u again​ I'll keep that on mind

[Llyrel]

No problem! And yup, I think 3 pages a month could definitely work for Webtoon ^__^ that's roughly what I'm doing on there now as well.

[samiluu]

Okay! Thanks very much​

[PaleOcra]

Hello, about 50subs for 4 episodes in Tapas? That really a good progress! Do you want to know mine? 3 subs in 1 year (33episodes)!. And they are all dead subs.

[samiluu]

oh... that sounds sad you do good on webtoon tho! and your art looks very good, i'll take a look at it when I have some time

[PaleOcra]

Do take a look! it's a real gem if you give it time and push on to Chapter 5 onwards.

[im_sleepy]

I'm not sure if this is helpful, and it's probably not very motivating, but in my experience, most people who get big have had some sort of shoutout from Tapas or Webtoons.

I've made 6-7 comics between Tapas and Webtoons. I got big on Tapas way before I got big on Webtoons and the way I got big was being featured on the front page. Same on webtoons. Every time my comic would do well it was because it was featured somewhere and then it would be able to grow on it's own. This has also been the case for my friends who have gotten big.

It's that first boost that is the most difficult and also the most ground breaking to get.

There are many ways you can work on getting a feature but it's mostly just grinding and having a solid comic, as unhelpful and vague as that is. But hopefully it's at least informational.

Please keep it up and keep going! I wish you all the best!